Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER October 31, 2016 NEWS 3 When it comes to practicing human resources, membership matters. Only HRPA offers Certified Human Resources Professional, Leader, and Executive designations: the new global standard for HR excellence and professionalism. These quality designations command respect and reflect the people-driven strategies HR professionals contribute to organizational success. P U T Y O U R C A R E E R I N F O C U S hrpa.ca/infocus career in focus " A career in Human Resources offers a world of opportunity to make a real difference. HR is a fantastic career choice for students because it gives them an opportunity to work with so many parts of an organization and impact the actual business results." Heather Briant, CHRE Senior Vice President, Human Resources Cineplex Entertainment Multinational ISO standard for HR competencies pushed by HRPA Working group around competency framework to be chaired by Bill Greenhalgh BY SARAH DOBSON THE Human Resources Profes- sionals Association (HRPA) saw success recently when its recom- mendation that the International Standards Organisation (ISO) mandate a working group to de- velop global standards in HR — integrating competency frame- works from various countries into a single global framework — was approved. "We had a competency model, we thought that it was very impor- tant to have as a foundation for enhancing the profession around the world, we made a proposal to the Standards Council of Canada who then sent the documentation off to the ISO. e ISO group then said… 'Tell us a bit more about it and we'll vote at that meeting.' So I went there, I made the pitch, proposal, they liked it and voted for it and said, 'Yep, this is good, we'll create a working group, we'd like you to chair it and anybody else interested, please sign up,'" said Bill Greenhalgh, CEO of the HRPA. ere was recognition Cana- da was a leader in this area, said Robert Carlyle, senior director of strategic workforce management at RBC in Toronto, citing the ini- tial discussions around a possible working group. "As other standards have been built, there was recognition that those are one-offs but it's not up- skilling the profession to be able to do many of the things that were building other standards for glob- al recognition," said Carlyle, who was also a Canadian representa- tive to the ISO. "So… this is the next step to allow us better international rec- ognition and understanding, and that's particularly important for trade, joint ventures, working overseas, to have this easier way to recognize and understand if people are capable." It's about coming up with a global competency framework that tells everybody what HR people should know and should be able to do, said Greenhalgh. "Once we have that, it can lead to all kinds of things… At a mini- mum, anybody can pick it up and use it as a foundation, they can use it for discussions in academia to develop curricula, they can use it for training and education, and companies can use it for hiring be- cause the beauty of having designa- tions, and particularly at three dif- ferent levels, is it validates exactly what those individuals can do." Standards process e standards process is based on consensus, transparency and stakeholder needs, so the ISO consults with members to see if there's interest or a need for stan- dardization in a particular area, said Stephanie Vuicic, director of communications at the Stan- dards Council of Canada (SCC) in Ottawa. If yes, the ISO then establishes a committee to develop an inter- national standard on a subject and the SCC — as the member body in Canada — does a national consul- tation in Canada to see if there's enough support to establish a mirror committee, so basically a similar committee to the ISO committee, she said. "en, we gather the results of the consultations that that com- mittee does and then we feed those back up to ISO on behalf of Canada. And those mirror committees… represent all of the various stakeholder groups and interests in Canada, so every committee is different but they can come from academia, indus- try, government, standards de- velopment organizations, NGOs, labour — it really depends on the subject matter," said Vuicic. "These committees establish and identify what the Canadian interests are and then through the SCC, we feed those back to ISO so that Canada has a voice on the international playing field or in the international realm to ensure the interests of Canadian stakeholders are represented in the establishment of an interna- tional standard." Typically, the whole process takes anywhere from two to four years, and it's a very exhaustive HR > pg. 9 "is is the next step for better international recognition."

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